introduction of new afraid cat to 3others

Question
My husband and I love cats, and Lucy is our 4th.  When we brought Lucy home we kept her in a closed off room and tried to introduce her slowly to the others.  Two of them could care less, but one of them is very aggressive, gives out a high pitched wine and one time she got in the room and tries to attack like a pray.  I had the new cat checked out and everything is fine, and I am usingthe spray and plug ins of feliway, but nothing is helping, all she is interested in is trying to get to get to Lucy.  We have Lucy closed off in our room by babygates, but all she does is hide and wants nothing to do with other cats.  She hides all day under the blankets or in the closet.  My husband and I tried to put them in seperate cages and tried to bring the cages close to each other so they can smell each other, but that didn't work either.  We also tried switching rooms so they could get use to each other's smells, but no luck.  We are at a loss as what to do.  The aggressive cat even got mad one time and attacked one of our others and my husband gave the aggresser a time out in a closed off room. I would appreciate any advise you can give me.

Answer
Hi
this is a difficult question to answer or rather it isn't , it's difficult to give you a solution.

As you know cats are not pack animals like dogs and have their own particular territory. If too many cats are confined to the same territory ie a house and are not allowed to increase their territory outside then tensions will occur.

Now some cats who were very well socialized during their first seven weeks of life are far more likely to except other animals (to an extent) but other cats who perhaps were not exposed to a lot of different animals during the sensitive period will always find it harder to except others. Plus you have the normal factors of just not liking each other. Why one person likes someone and not another works also in the animal world.

You seems to have done every thing you can to try and get the cats to settle down, i assume they are all spayed so it is either just a dislike thing or a territory thing. All i can suggest is that you continue with the introduction methods you have been doing like the two cage thing. Let one of the cats out so that they can freely explore the other cage, yes there might be hissing etc but this normal. Hopefully over time things will calm down but there are never any guarantees I'm afraid. Sometimes you just have to accept that they will never get on and then you have to make the decision about whether or not to find another home for one of the cats. Sorry

Best wishes Kate
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